2.They found what they suspected to be hard evidence of this, and tracked this evidence to Aomori’s Seino Transport shipping depot.

3. Toru entered the depot, greeted and was greeted by staff, identified the evidence (a box of whale meat) and removed it so DNA samples of the meat, photos and video evidence could be taken before returning it.

4. Once they had it in their hand, they realised they had the so-called “smoking gun”, and resolved to hand the box of evidence over to the authorities instead, with a request for an official investigation.

5. An official investigation was started, but dropped on the basis of a short, unsubstantiated explanation from the whalers that they had investigated themselves and found themselves innocent [trial footnote #2].

6. Junichi and Toru were then arrested, held for 26 days (23 without charge), and eventually charged and put on trial for “theft” and “trespass”.